Comment by sureglymop

To me, it seems that the author previously focused on "making as much money possible". That is understandable as a driving force, as most people think to be rich is what it means to be successful. It is also very understandable in the context of "the American dream", which is all about this. But now that the author reached the place of being more than rich enough, this overarching purpose and goal is gone.

What I think is much better though, is to instead just have curiosity as a driving force. And I think many people here on Hacker News do have curiosity as a bigger driving force than becoming rich. It is curiosity that drives one to tinker around, make random projects, hack around. Making money in the process of this has just been a convenient side effect in our industry. The truth is, if you have insatiable curiosity you will never not have purpose because there will always be a "next day" that you do not know about yet. It isn't just something intrinsic either, you can self-identify as being insatiably curious and try to live that way.

Having that said, there is a certain amount of privilege required to even be in a position where you can claim this without having to worry too much about your survival.